An aircraft is typically manufactured in a large enclosed facility, such as a factory. Numerous components are assembled together to form the aircraft. For example, wings are separately formed from a fuselage. After a wing is formed at one location, the wing may be moved to another location within the facility where it is joined to a fuselage.
As can be appreciated, a wing of an aircraft (particularly of a large commercial aircraft) is large and heavy. Overhead crane systems are typically used to move the wings within the manufacturing facility. The overhead crane is used to separately pick up left and right wings from respective dollies, and transport them to a location of a fuselage. The same crane may then be used to sequentially pick up other components of the aircraft, such as landing gear, in order to transport them to the location of the fuselage. The crane is generally used to pick up and transport a single component (such as a wing or landing gear) at any one time. As such, the time to manufacture an aircraft depends, in part, on the time it takes for the crane to sequentially move various components. That is, because the crane is used to transport a single component at any one time, transportation of additional components to an assembly site is delayed until the crane completes transportation of the initial component. In short, use of the crane to transport various components to an assembly site may represent a bottleneck that increases a time of manufacture.
Accordingly, a need exists for an efficient system and method of moving large components within a facility. A need exists for an efficient method of manufacturing a vehicle, such as a commercial aircraft.